Trump shooting motive remains elusive as FBI pores over suspect’s home town
FBI agents went house to house scouring the Bethel Park neighborhood lived in by Thomas Matthew Crooks and his family as mystery continued to surround the motives of the gunman who tried to assassinate Donald Trump while he was addressing a crowd in nearby Butler, Pennsylvania.
The FBI said it had managed to access Crooks’s phone but preliminary analysis of the information at the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, had reportedly not advanced the search into Crooks’s reasons for shooting at Trump, injuring the former US president, killing a rally-goer and wounding two more.
Crooks was almost instantly killed by Secret Service agents returning fire, but the shocking incident has plunged America into political turmoil and roiled an already brutal election campaign, marred by fears of political violence and growing unease about the prospect of civil unrest.
Related: Former classmate describes Trump rally gunman as ‘definitely conservative’
The FBI is investigating whether Crooks was a politically motivated homegrown domestic violent extremist. In an updated statement on Monday, the agency said that the search of the suspect’s residence and vehicle were complete, and it had conducted nearly 100 interviews of law enforcement personnel, event attendees and other witnesses who had been at Big Butler Fairgrounds on Saturday.
“The firearm used in the shooting was purchased legally. The shooter was not known to the FBI prior to this incident,” the agency said.
It added: “While the investigation to date indicates the shooter acted alone, the FBI continues to conduct logical investigative activity to determine if there were any co-conspirators associated with this attack. At this time, there are no current public safety concerns.”
On Monday, it was disclosed that Crooks, 20, may have been trained in marksmanship at the local Clairton Sportsmen’s Club where he was registered as a member.
In a statement to the New York Times, the club’s general counsel said the organization “fully admonishes the senseless act of violence that occurred yesterday” but declined to describe what training Crooks may have had, citing the FBI investigation.
At the gun club, a ramshackle collection of huts on a hillside 15 miles south of Pittsburgh, a US and a POW/MIA flag, symbolizing US commitment to prisoners of war and missing in action during the Vietnam war and all conflicts, flew over the range.
The sharp crack of rounds could be heard as two club members fired at rifle targets, some farther away than the estimated 130 yards between Crooks’s rifle and Trump’s podium when the shooter squeezed off as many as eight shots, striking Trump’s ear, killing a member of the audience and injuring two others.
A manager at Clairton refused to discuss what instruction Crooks had received, and ordered reporters to leave the property.
A firearms instructor at a local gun shop, Legion Arms, said Crooks had not been a customer at that store but opined that the distance of the shot was not great for the type of gun, an AR-15-style rifle, to be fired accurately in the right hands.
“That kind of round and gun are good for 700 or 800 yards,” the instructor, who declined to be identified, said. Crooks, he added, had shown inexperience in his aim, which may also have been affected because he had been rushed after being spotted on his perch above a glass research factory.
“He shot at the head and not the body – the body is what you shoot at when you’re shooting long distance,” the instructor said. “Shooting for the head is what people do because they’ve seen it in movies.”
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper reported that Crooks purchased 50 rounds of ammunition at Allegheny Arms and Gun Works in Bethel Park hours before the Butler rally. Investigators also said Crooks bought 50 rounds the morning of the shooting.
The Allegheny county bomb squad confirmed on Monday that it had joined the investigation after explosives, some appearing to be grenades, were found in Crooks’s car.
Separately, the Butler sheriff, Michael Slupe, confirmed to the news outlet KDKA-TV that an armed municipal officer with the Butler Township had encountered Crooks before he fired shots at the former president from outside the perimeter of the fairground.
“All I know is the officer had both hands on the roof to get up on the roof, never made it because the shooter had turned towards the officer, and rightfully and smartly, the officer let go,” Slupe said.
In Bethel Park, where Crooks lived with his mother, attended Bethel Park high school, and later got a job in the kitchens of a nursing home, residents continued to puzzle over his motives for attempting to assassinate Trump.
Multiple school friends have described an isolated student who excelled at math but fell short socially. Some described him as conservative-leaning in his politics but overall the picture that has emerged so far is unclear. Unusually for many young people, Crooks had little online presence which might have revealed his political leanings or state of mind in the run-up to the attack.
Alex Williams, 23, who graduated a year before Crooks, said the local community was still reeling.
“Nothing really crazy happens in Bethel so I think a lot of people are disturbed, because it’s not normal,” Williams said. “They’re disappointed that the guy came from here and disappointed it happened at all.”
Williams said he did not recall if Crooks had been bullied, as some direct contemporaries have said. Bullying at the school was often limited to “eye-rolling” and social exclusion, he recalled.
One former student at Crooks’s school, Jason Kohler, has said Crooks was bullied often. “He was quiet, but he was bullied. He was bullied so much,” Kohler said.
Williams said he believed his generation had been deeply affected by Covid lockdowns that had “made us really online” and the extreme political environment had made it possible to become “very right-leaning or very left-leaning … they’ll go down like a pipeline whether it’s left or right.”
As the investigation continues, Biden has called on Americans to reject politically motivated violence. Trump has said his speech to the Republican national convention will focus on “unity”.
“It’s 100% possible for someone to go down pretty far and be, like, ‘yeah, I’m gonna kill the president,’” Williams said.
Crooks’s neighbor Steve Riviere told KDKA that the community “is shocked and surprised, maybe not as surprised as we should be, but shocked that this kind of thing happened” and hoped “this will be the end of it and we’ll get to a position where people can have regular polite discourse about their issues rather than pulling out a gun and climbing on a roof”.
